Isaac Price Eager for Premier League Challenge Against Newcastle
Isaac Price is not hiding it. West Bromwich Albion’s young midfielder is desperate for a crack at Premier League opposition – and Newcastle United away in the Carabao Cup is exactly the kind of stage he wants.
Fresh from a brace in Albion’s 3-1 win over Burnley on Sunday, the 20-year-old heads to St James’ Park with a side sitting second in the Championship and riding a growing wave of confidence.
“All the lads are buzzing,” Price told BBC WM Sport. “They are the games you want to be drawn in, in the cup – to go and play away at a Premier League team and at a place where we can go and show our quality. I can’t wait.”
Newcastle, who opened their league campaign with a 2-2 draw against Liverpool on Tyneside, represent a sharp jump in level from what Albion have faced so far. For Price, that’s the whole point. A test, a marker, a chance to see how far this team under James Morrison can really go.
Lessons from last season’s slide
The optimism is real at The Hawthorns, but it is also guarded. Albion started brightly 12 months ago too, only for their season to unravel under Ryan Mason. Performances dipped, results collapsed, and by the end they were scrambling just to stay in the Championship.
Price hasn’t forgotten.
“Every game in the Championship is tough and it doesn’t matter who you play,” he said. “We had this last year – we started really well and it went downhill pretty fast, so it is about keeping our feet on the ground, keeping a level of consistency in performances to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
That experience has hardened him. There is no talk of getting carried away, no grand declarations about promotion. Just a focus on game management and cutting out the chaos that almost dragged them into League One.
“You are always learning as a player, even the lads who have played 2, 3, 400 games,” Price added. “It’s about managing games and moments – we conceded a lot of goals that we shouldn’t have last season and we didn’t score enough at the other end.
This year I want to be a key player where I show that that can’t happen and I want to be a leader in this team to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Those are big words from a young Northern Ireland international, but his early-season form backs them up. Two wins from two in the league, Burnley put away, and Rotherham United beaten in the first round of the EFL Cup to set up this tie with Newcastle. The platform is there.
Morrison’s steady hand
If last season’s rescue act had a face, it was James Morrison’s. Thrown in as interim head coach after Eric Ramsay’s sacking in February, the former Scotland international steadied a listing ship and then some.
His ten-match unbeaten run dragged Albion clear of danger and earned him the job on a permanent basis. For a club that had been stumbling, it felt like a reset.
Morrison’s history at West Brom – 341 appearances, a decade of service, a place in club folklore – gives him instant credibility, but Price says it’s the way he carries himself that really lands with the dressing room.
“It’s helpful for all the lads,” Price said. “He knows the club inside out. He’s really humble – you wouldn’t know day to day how many games he played and how many goals he scored for West Brom because he doesn’t talk about it, but he is a legend and the lads love him.
“He’s good around the changing room and he understands what we need. We look really good on the pitch at the moment, so it is about building the consistency which is what he wants.”
That word again: consistency. It runs through everything Albion are saying and doing at the start of this campaign. Win your duels. Manage the big moments. Don’t switch off. Don’t repeat last year.
Newcastle away will stretch all of that. The noise, the pace, the quality – it will be a different world from Rotherham in round one or Burnley on a Sunday afternoon.
Price is ready to embrace it. West Brom have rebuilt their belief; now they want to see how it holds up under the St James’ Park floodlights.
